Free Plaid to the Bone by Mia Marlowe

maid could read so she wouldn’t have to recount the way Adam’s words took this already princely bridal gift and made it even more dear.
    “It’s . . . I canna say, Grizel. Dinna make me, but . . . ’tis a far more lovely collection of words than I can bear.”
    Grizel’s lips curled into a smile. “Oh, my lady, I’m so happy for ye.”
    Cait put her head on Grizel’s shoulder and wept, sure the old woman thought they were tears of joy.
    Instead they were tears of bitter realization. Her father and Morgan MacRath had lied to her. Adam Cameron was not a monster. He wasn’t a tyrant. He wasn’t cruel.
    He was a man she might have learned to love.

Chapter 8

    “Bide a while and I’ll riddle ye a riddle: How is a bridegroom at the altar like a felon on the scaffold? Both are about to have a noose slipped over their heads. But only the man on the scaffold kens what’s coming.”

    From the journal of Callum Farquhar,
trickster, liar, and one who quickly
recognizes others who share those traits.

    Adam was no judge of weddings, but he allowed that his was suitably joyful. His people stood shoulder to shoulder, filling the small kirk and craning their necks for the pleasure of seeing their laird take a wife. A trio of bagpipes played a spritely tune as his bride processed down the aisle. Even the priest seemed jubilant, tapping his toe under his cassock in time with the echoing melody.
    He only wished Cait had met his eyes more than once or twice while the rite was intoned over them. When he took her hand, her fingers trembled, chilly as icicles. He enclosed her hand between both of his, but no matter how long the priest warbled on, Adam couldn’t seem to warm her.
    As they knelt side by side, he snatched a glance down at her. His mother’s necklace rested on the smooth curve of her breasts.
    “The pearls suit ye,” he leaned down to whisper when the priest turned his back to them for a bit.
    Her lips twitched in a half smile. “No’ bad for grains of sand, aye?”
    But then their fleeting moment of connection vanished in the ritual and droning sacrament that would unite the two of them into one. Strange that a few whispered confidences over his bridal gift felt more intimate and true than the recitation of their vows.
    During the wedding feast, his bride scarcely ate a bite and spoke little. Adam hoped she was merely suffering from maidenly nerves over the coming night. If that was all that troubled her, he’d settle her fears easily enough. Cait was passionate once roused. He was confident they’d deal well together.
    But Adam couldn’t focus on her when his people were intent on raising toast after toast to them. He could have kicked his own arse up between his shoulders when he didn’t notice that old Grizel and the two chambermaids, Jane and Janet, had spirited her away between one boisterous drinking game and the next.
    It wouldn’t do to get foxed on his wedding night. He waited for only two more rounds of drinks, then left to the accompaniment of shouts and good-natured jokes. Once he quit the Great Hall, he took the stone stairs to the upper story two at a time.
    Adam hadn’t been seeking a wife, but he was surprised to discover he was more than ready to have one. His father had always claimed Adam’s mother was the best part of him.
    After she died when Adam was a boy, he was convinced his father was right. Without her gentle influence, the laird of Bonniebroch grew increasingly hard-fisted and hard-hearted. Always a strong leader, his father stopped directing his efforts against those who might threaten his people and turned on his people instead. He controlled every aspect of their lives and enforced his will without pity.
    Adam hoped he wasn’t likely to run roughshod over his people like his father had. But just in case his authority grew into a license for cruelty, a woman like Cait, one who had the courage to stand up to a mob, should provide more than enough of a conscience to keep him